


Truth Lies in the Shadow of Dreams

by cathybites



Category: Penny Dreadful (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 09:02:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2806994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cathybites/pseuds/cathybites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ethan dreams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Truth Lies in the Shadow of Dreams

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Burning_Nightingale](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Burning_Nightingale/gifts).



Ethan dreams that he's outside, somewhere out West, the air crisp and cold around him. Colorado, he thinks, the dark peaks of mountains barely visible in the distance. The full moon glows like a beacon, a lighthouse shining in the dark, and Ethan can feel the pull of its power, the familiar tugging at his soul. He runs, realizing only after a moment that he's on all fours, snow clinging to his fur, trees blurring as he rushes through the forest. 

He takes a deep breath, tongue lolling, and there's a scent in the air. It's sweet, cloying, nauseating; it's the scent of flowers rotting under a hot sun. It's beauty and decay, and he growls low, deep in his chest.

\---

As charming as he can be - or, perhaps, because of that very charm that is wielded like a weapon - Ethan does not trust Dorian. He's all slow smiles and easy grace, seducing his way through the world as if he hasn't a care, but Ethan recognizes the act for the lie that it is. He can sense something dark beneath Dorian's surface, something churning and malignant. It raises his hackles, and at times, it takes all of his strength not to bear his teeth and lunge at Dorian's throat.

There is a similarity between Dorian and Ethan's sire. Not so much physically, for Roderick had been as fair as Dorian is dark, as brutish as Dorian is refined. But there sis a certain magnetism that clings to both of them. Or, as in Roderick's case, once clung. It's a pull, like the moon on the tides, and Ethan feels it like shackles around his limbs.

\---

He dreams of his first hunt, of his last hunt, of every one in between. He's running over the endless plains of Kansas, cutting through the tall grass, pulse racing. His prey is close, so close, and Ethan stretches his limbs out, reaching, jaws snapping at warm flesh...

...and pain explodes along his flank. He can taste hot blood in his mouth, and he can feel it pouring down his legs. Bones crack under his teeth, and he cries out, his foreleg shattering. Hunger consumes him.

\---

There are few men left alive who Ethan truly fears. His father is one of them. Sir Malcolm is another.

Ethan remembers stories his grandmother used to tell him when he was a boy, of fierce hunters fighting terrifying beasts. Man triumphing over nature, taming the wilderness. Sometimes, when he thinks back to those stories, he wonders if his grandmother somehow knew what he would become. Did she look into his eyes and see his destiny?

He fears what Sir Malcolm sees when he looks at him. He's a renowned hunter after all, of both the natural and the supernatural. Ethan feels as if he is on full display when around Sir Malcolm, all his crimes written in blood across his skin. After the zoo - a foolish act Ethan should have never attempted - he was sure he would be found out.

Sir Malcolm had been too distracted by thoughts of Mina, had little ability to focus on a hunt that wasn't for his daughter. And so Ethan survives, vowing to never be obvious again. 

He knows, though, it is only a matter of time before his fortune dries up, before the focus shifts to him, and Ethan can only hope that he will be long gone before then.

\---

He dreams of a thunderstorm, of an enraged sky unleashing its fury over the Black Hills of Dakota. His fur is matted down, and he shivers, ice penetrating to the very core of him. The outcropping of rock he had found as shelter provides little in the way of it, and Ethan slumps down, miserable. The rain falls relentlessly, pounding at him until he's certain there's nothing left in the world but the storm and him. His heart aches, a sudden cage of loneliness closing around it, and he lifts his head and howls to the heavens. 

\---

For all of his macabre interests, Ethan views Victor as something of an innocent. Not truly, of course. He doesn't think that anyone associated with Sir Malcom's crusade could be counted as such. And he knows that Victor is hiding something from them, something that forces him to keep everyone at arm's length.

Maybe it's only that within Victor, Ethan can sense an emptiness, an all-consuming void longing to be filled. He senses a kindred spirit, in a way, someone lost and looking for his place in the world. Whatever dark secret Victor could possibly possess, Ethan knows that not only could it be worse than his own, but that if Victor ever chooses to confide in him, they both might find a small amount of peace in the world.

\---

Ethan dreams of nothing. Or, more correctly, he dreams of nothingness. Of darkness, of an abyss so black it crushes the breath from his lungs. He tries to move through it, but he has no sense of his limbs. He opens his mouth, but no sound comes out. He cannot even tell what form he is in, whether he is wolf or man, or some nightmarish combination of the two. 

He can hear, though. Whispers, like snakes slithering across sand. Words that have no meaning to him but still choke the breath out of him. The sounds crawl over his skin, growing louder as they wind up his body, until his head rings with them, coalescing into a single word.

Death.

\---

But Dorian's duplicitous nature, Sir Malcom's dark instinct, Victor's crushing loneliness, they are nothing compared what Ethan senses in Vanessa. He doesn't fear her, not in the way that he probably should. Her vision is too sharp, her smiles are too knowing. He guards his secret closely, keeps it hidden far from the light of day, but he's certain that Vanessa must know. She may be human, but simultaneously she belongs to the dark. The _demimonde_ , as she had called it, is her cage as much as it is his. If she cannot sense what he is now, it is only a matter of time before she does.

But for all the danger she presents to him, Ethan is drawn to her. And therein lies the peril. He is the moth to her flame, moving ever closer, feeling the heat scorch his flesh. This fire that burns within her will consume them both. A grand conflagration that will destroy them and everything around them.

Until it does, though, Ethan will wait. Wait, and watch, and dream.


End file.
